July 2024 Newsletter
the power of PLACE
Kith and Kin
“Because we have not made our lives to fit
our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
the streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope
then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
of what it is that no other place is, and by
your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
place that you belong to though it is not yours,
for it was from the beginning and will be to the end.”
(from This Place That You Belong To by Wendell Berry)
We gathered, “kith and kin” of Dr. Rosemary Smith, in the Weldon and Rosalie Weekley Visitor’s Center, in Gothic, Colorado, a gathering that resonated on many levels.
RMBL has weekly summer gatherings for members of our Explorer’s Club. These are opportunities to thank our major supporters, and for them to learn more about RMBL science and education, and by extension, better understand their impact on individuals, RMBL, and the larger world.
Ian Billick | PhD
Executive Director, RMBL
sciencestories
Beetles and Benevolence
Carrion beetles are like homicide detectives. They make their living off dead bodies. Dr. Rosemary Smith makes her living studying them, among other subjects. Specifically, she looks at things like how different habitats affect their breeding behaviors, how multiple species coexist in the same habitat, and how they’re adjusting to changing climate conditions. As she puts it, “do they move around when what they need moves out from under them?”
Dr. Smith also studies how carrion insects’ taste for dead creatures boosts soil nutrients, which in turn promotes plant growth. Because carrion beetles are so important to the return of nutrients to the soil, could they be useful in restoring a disturbed soil site? To find out, she and the students she mentors are setting up an experiment.
Remember SAIL, the atmospheric research campaign that brought in huge atmospheric measuring instruments in giant shipping containers? These containers have moved on, and Dr. Smith’s team will be observing the role carrion beetles play in returning nutrients to the soil that lay beneath the heavy containers.